Basketball, game played between two teams of five players each on a rectangular court, usually indoors. Each team tries to score by tossing the ball through the opponent’s goal, an elevated horizontal hoop and net called a basket.

For that first game of basketball in 1891, Naismith used as goals two half-bushel peach baskets, which gave the sport its name. The students were enthusiastic. After much running and shooting, William R. Chase made a midcourt shot—the only score in that historic contest. Word spread about the newly invented game, and numerous associations wrote Naismith for a copy of the rules, which were published in the January 15, 1892, issue of the Triangle, the YMCA Training School’s campus paper.

James Naismith holding a ball and a peach basket, the first basketball equipment.

UPI/Bettmann Archive

While basketball is competitively a winter sport, it is played on a 12-month basis—on summer playgrounds, in municipal, industrial, and church halls, in school yards and family driveways, and in summer camps—often on an informal basis between two or more contestants. Many grammar schools, youth groups, municipal recreation centres, churches, and other organizations conduct basketball programs for youngsters of less than high school age. Jay Archer, of Scranton, Pennsylvania, introduced “biddy” basketball in 1950 for boys and girls under 12 years of age, the court and equipment being adjusted for size.

History

The early years

In the early years the number of players on a team varied according to the number in the class and the size of the playing area. In 1894 teams began to play with five on a side when the playing area was less than 1,800 square feet (167.2 square metres); the number rose to seven when the gymnasium measured from 1,800 to 3,600 square feet (334.5 square metres) and up to nine when the playing area exceeded that. In 1895 the number was occasionally set at five by mutual consent; the rules stipulated five players two years later, and this number has remained ever since.

Players shooting into a closed-bottom peach basket in an outdoor game of basketball, 1892.

Courtesy of the Basketball Hall of Fame, Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.

Since Naismith and five of his original players were Canadians, it is not surprising that Canada was the first country outside the United States to play the game. Basketball was introduced in France in 1893, in England in 1894, in Australia, China, and India soon thereafter, and in Japan in 1900.

While basketball helped swell the membership of YMCAs because of the availability of their gyms, within five years the game was outlawed by various associations because gyms that had been occupied by classes of 50 or 60 members were now monopolized by only 10 to 18 players. The banishment of the game induced many members to terminate their YMCA membership and to hire halls to play the game, thus paving the way to the professionalization of the sport.

Originally, players wore one of three styles of uniforms: knee-length football trousers; jersey tights, as commonly worn by wrestlers; or short padded pants, forerunners of today’s uniforms, plus knee guards. The courts often were of irregular shape with occasional obstructions such as pillars, stairways, or offices that interfered with play. In 1903 it was ruled that all boundary lines must be straight. In 1893 the Narragansett Machinery Co. of Providence, Rhode Island, marketed a hoop of iron with a hammock style of basket. Originally a ladder, then a pole, and finally a chain fastened to the bottom of the net was used to retrieve a ball after a goal had been scored. Nets open at the bottom were adopted in 1912–13. In 1895–96 the points for making a basket (goal, or field goal) were reduced from three to two, and the points for making a free throw (shot uncontested from a line in front of the basket after a foul had been committed) were reduced from three to one.

Baskets were frequently attached to balconies, making it easy for spectators behind a basket to lean over the railings and deflect the ball to favour one side and hinder the other; in 1895 teams were urged to provide a 4-by-6-foot (1.2-by-1.8-metre) screen for the purpose of eliminating interference. Soon after, wooden backboards proved more suitable. Glass backboards were legalized by the professionals in 1908–09 and by colleges in 1909–10. In 1920–21 the backboards were moved 2 feet (0.6 metre), and in 1939–40 4 feet, in from the end lines to reduce frequent stepping out-of-bounds. Fan-shaped backboards were made legal in 1940–41.

A soccer ball (football) was used for the first two years. In 1894 the first basketball was marketed. It was laced, measured close to 32 inches (81 cm), or about 4 inches (10 cm) larger than the soccer ball, in circumference, and weighed less than 20 ounces (567 grams). By 1948–49, when the laceless molded ball was made official, the size had been set at 30 inches (76 cm).

The first college to play the game was either Geneva College (Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania) or the University of Iowa. C.O. Bemis heard about the new sport at Springfield and tried it out with his students at Geneva in 1892. At Iowa, H.F. Kallenberg, who had attended Springfield in 1890, wrote Naismith for a copy of the rules and also presented the game to his students. At Springfield, Kallenberg met Amos Alonzo Stagg, who became athletic director at the new University of Chicago in 1892. The first college basketball game with five on a side was played between the University of Chicago and the University of Iowa in Iowa City on January 18, 1896. The University of Chicago won, 15–12, with neither team using a substitute. Kallenberg refereed that game—a common practice in that era—and some of the spectators took exception to some of his decisions.

The colleges formed their own rules committee in 1905, and by 1913 there were at least five sets of rules: collegiate, YMCA–Amateur Athletic Union, those used by state militia groups, and two varieties of professional rules. Teams often agreed to play under a different set for each half of a game. To establish some measure of uniformity, the colleges, Amateur Athletic Union, and YMCA formed the Joint Rules Committee in 1915. This group was renamed the National Basketball Committee (NBC) of the United States and Canada in 1936 and until 1979 served as the game’s sole amateur rule-making body. In that year, however, the colleges broke away to form their own rules committee, and during the same year the National Federation of State High School Associations likewise assumed the task of establishing separate playing rules for the high schools. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Rules Committee for men is a 12-member board representing all three NCAA divisions. It has six members from Division I schools and three each from Divisions II and III. It has jurisdiction over colleges, junior colleges, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), and Armed Forces basketball. There is a similar body for women’s play.

Growth of the game

Basketball grew steadily but slowly in popularity and importance in the United States and internationally in the first three decades after World War II. Interest in the game deepened as a result of television exposure, but with the advent of cable television, especially during the 1980s, the game’s popularity exploded at all levels. Given a timely mix of spectacular players—such as Earvin (“Magic”) Johnson, Julius Erving (“Dr. J”), Larry Bird, and Michael Jordan—and the greatly increased exposure, basketball moved quickly to the forefront of the American sporting scene, alongside such traditional leaders as baseball and football. Four areas of the game developed during this period: U.S. high school and college basketball, professional basketball, women’s basketball, and international basketball.

Julius Erving, 1985.

Dick Raphael—NBAE/Getty Images

U.S. high school and college basketball

Basketball at the high school and college levels developed from a structured, rigid game in the early days to one that is often fast-paced and high-scoring. Individual skills improved markedly, and, although basketball continued to be regarded as the ultimate team game, individualistic, one-on-one performers came to be not only accepted but used as an effective means of winning games.

In the early years games were frequently won with point totals of less than 30, and the game, from the spectator’s viewpoint, was slow. Once a team acquired a modest lead, the popular tactic was to stall the game by passing the ball without trying to score, in an attempt to run out the clock. The NBC, seeing the need to discourage such slowdown tactics, instituted a number of rule changes. In 1932–33 a line was drawn at midcourt, and the offensive team was required to advance the ball past it within 10 seconds or lose possession. Five years later, in 1937–38, the centre jump following each field goal or free throw was eliminated. Instead, the defending team was permitted to inbound the ball from the out-of-bounds line underneath the basket. Decades passed before another alteration of like magnitude was made in the college game. After experimentation, the NCAA Rules Committee installed a 45-second shot clock in 1985 (reduced to 35 seconds in 1993), restricting the time a team could control the ball before shooting, and one year later it implemented a three-point shot rule for baskets made beyond a distance of 19.75 feet (6.0 metres). In 2008 the three-point line was moved to 20.75 feet (6.3 metres) from the basket.

More noticeable alteration in the game came at both the playing and coaching levels. Stanford University’s Hank Luisetti was the first to use and popularize the one-hand shot in the late 1930s. Until then the only outside attempts were two-handed push shots. In the 1950s and ’60s a shooting style evolved from Luisetti’s push-off one hander to a jump shot, which is released at the top of the jump. West Virginia University guard Jerry West and Purdue University’s Rick Mount were two players who demonstrated the devastating effectiveness of this shot.

Coaching strategy changed appreciably over the years. Frank W. Keaney, coach at the University of Rhode Island from 1921 to 1948, is credited with introducing the concept of “fast break” basketball, in which the offensive team rushes the ball upcourt hoping to get a good shot before the defense can get set. Another man who contributed to a quicker pace of play, particularly through the use of the pressure defense, was Adolph Rupp, who became the University of Kentucky’s coach in 1931 and turned its program into one of the most storied in basketball history.

Over the years one of the rules makers’ chief concerns was to neutralize the advantage of taller players. At 6 feet 5 inches (1.96 metres) Joe Lapchick was considered very tall when he played for the Original Celtics in the 1920s, but, as even taller players appeared, rules were changed in response. To prevent tall players from stationing themselves near the basket, a rule was instituted in 1932–33 prohibiting the player with the ball from standing inside the foul lane with his back to the basket for more than three seconds; the three-second rule later applied to any attacking player in the foul lane. In 1937–38 a new rule forbade any player from touching the ball when it was in the basket or on its rim (basket interference), and in 1944–45 it became illegal for any defending player to touch the ball on its downward flight toward the basket (goaltending).

Nevertheless, with each passing decade, the teams with the tallest players tended to dominate. Bob Kurland (7 feet [2.13 metres]) led Oklahoma A&M to two NCAA championships in the 1940s and led the nation in scoring in 1945–46. In the same era George Mikan (6 feet 10 inches [2.08 metres]) scored more than 550 points in each of his final two seasons at DePaul University before going on to play nine professional seasons in which he scored more than 11,000 points. Mikan was an outstanding player, not only because of his size but because of his ability to shoot sweeping hook shots with both hands.

In the 1950s Bill Russell (6 feet 9 inches [2.06 metres]) led the University of San Francisco to two NCAA championships before going on to become one of the greatest centres in professional basketball history. Wilt Chamberlain (7 feet 1 inch [2.16 metres]) played at the University of Kansas before turning professional in the late 1950s and is regarded as the greatest all-around big man ever to play. It remained, however, for Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), also 7 feet 1 inch, to most influence the rules. After his sophomore year (1966–67) at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), the dunk shot was banned from collegiate basketball, ostensibly because the rules committee felt, again, that the big men had too great an advantage. The rule was rescinded beginning with the 1976–77 season, and the dunk shot became an important part of the game, electrifying both fans and players.

So too have the small- and medium-size players affected the game’s development. Bob Cousy, playing at Holy Cross College and later for the Boston Celtics, was regarded as one of the game’s first great playmakers. He was among the first to use the behind-the-back pass and between-the-legs dribble as effective offensive maneuvers. Later such smaller players as Providence College’s Ernie DiGregorio, the University of North Carolina’s Phil Ford, and Indiana’sIsiah Thomas proved the importance of their role. Between those two extremes are players such as Louisiana State University’sPete Maravich, who set an all-time collegiate scoring record of 44.5 points per game in the 1969–70 season; Magic Johnson, the point guard who led Michigan State University to a championship in 1979 and the Los Angeles Lakers to several NBA championships; Oscar Robertson, a dominating performer for the University of Cincinnati in the late 1950s and for the Milwaukee Bucks in the 1970s; Larry Bird of Indiana State University, a forward of exceptional versatility who led the Boston Celtics to several championships; and Michael Jordan, a great all-around player with the University of North Carolina in the 1980s who is widely considered the best professional player in the history of the sport.

Nothing influenced the college game’s growth more than television, however. The NCAA championship games were televised nationally from 1963, and by the 1980s all three major television networks were telecasting intersectional college games during the November-to-March season. Rights fees for these games soared from a few million dollars to well over $50 million by the late 1980s. As for broadcasting the NCAA finals, a television contract that began in 2003 gave the NCAA an average of $545 million per year for the television rights; this exponential growth in broadcast fees reflected the importance of these games to both networks and advertisers.

Profits such as these inevitably attract gamblers, and in the evolution of college basketball the darkest hours have been related to gambling scandals. But, as the game began to draw more attention and generate more income, the pressure to win intensified, resulting in an outbreak of rules violations, especially with regard to recruitment of star players.

The most identifiable phase of college basketball in America is the postseason tournament held in March—popularly known as March Madness. Interest in the NCAA tournament paralleled the growth of the game. The first basketball tournament was staged by the Amateur Athletic Union in 1897 and was won by New York City’s 23rd Street YMCA, later to become a traveling professional team known as the New York Wanderers. Although the YMCA was prominently identified with the game in its early years, it did not hold its first national tournament until 1923, and that event took place until 1962. The first national tournament for colleges was held in 1937 and was conducted by an organization in Kansas City, Missouri, that later became the NAIA.

New York City basketball writers organized the first National Invitation Tournament (NIT) in 1938, but a year later the New York City colleges took control of the event. Until the early 1950s the NIT was considered the most prestigious American tournament, but, with the growth of the college-run NCAA championship, the NIT became a consolation event for teams that failed to make the NCAA selections.

The first NCAA tournament was played in 1939, and its growth took place in three stages. The first era ran through 1964, when it was essentially a tournament for champions of various conferences. There were just eight teams in the 1939 field, and by 1963 it had been expanded to 25 teams, all champions of their respective conferences, plus several successful independent teams. The most outstanding teams of the 1940s and ’50s participated in both the NCAA and NIT tournaments, but, after the gambling scandals that followed the 1950 NIT championship, a rule was passed prohibiting a team from playing in both. Afterward the NCAA tournament progressively outgrew the NIT.

In 1964 the second era dawned as the UCLA Bruins, coached by John Wooden, began a period of domination over the NCAA field. From that season until 1975 Wooden led his teams to 10 NCAA championships. Only championships won by Texas Western University (now University of Texas at El Paso) in 1966 and North Carolina State in 1974 interrupted UCLA’s reign. In the eyes of many, the UCLA dynastic period probably had a regressive effect on the game’s growth; a sport with such high predictability lost some of its attractiveness.

The third growth stage came with the end of UCLA’s dominance. Champions began to emerge from all sections of the country. From the field of 25 in 1974, the NCAA tournament expanded to 64 participants in 1985, to 65 in 2001, and to 68 in 2011 (corresponding “play-in games” were added in 2001 and 2011), including not only conference championship teams but other outstanding teams from the same conferences as well. Three weeks of play culminate with the Final Four weekend, an event now comparable in general public interest and media attention to the Super Bowl and World Series. Championships at the Division II, Division III, and NAIA levels also continued to grow in interest, reaping some of the fallout from the popularity of Division I.

About 17,000 high schools in the United States have basketball teams. All 50 states conduct statewide tournaments annually.

U.S. professional basketball

The professional game first prospered largely in the Middle Atlantic and New England states. Trenton (New Jersey) and the New York Wanderers were the first great professional clubs, followed by the Buffalo (New York) Germans, who started out in 1895 as 14-year-old members of the Buffalo YMCA and, with occasional new members, continued for 44 years, winning 792 out of 878 games.

A group of basketball stylists who never received the acclaim they deserved (because in their heyday they played for various towns) consisted of Edward and Lew Wachter, Jimmy Williamson, Jack Inglis, and Bill Hardman. They introduced the bounce pass and long pass as offensive weapons and championed the rule (adopted 1923–24) that made each player, when fouled, shoot his own free throw.

Before World War II the most widely heralded professional team was the Original Celtics, which started out in 1915 as a group of youngsters from New York City, kept adding better players in the early 1920s, and became so invincible that the team disbanded in 1928, only to regroup in the early 1930s as the New York Celtics. They finally retired in 1936. The Celtics played every night of the week, twice on Sundays, and largely on the road. During the 1922–23 season they won 204 of 215 games.

Another formidable aggregation was the New York Renaissance (the Rens), organized by Robert Douglas in 1923 and regarded as the strongest all-black team of all time. During the 1925–26 campaign they split a six-game series with the Original Celtics. During the 1932–33 season the Rens won 88 consecutive games. In 1939 they defeated the Harlem Globetrotters and the Oshkosh All Stars in the world championship pro tournament in Chicago. Among the great professional clubs were the teams of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, and East Liverpool, Ohio, as well as the New York Nationals, the Paterson (New Jersey) Crescents, and the South Philadelphia Hebrew All Stars—better known as the Sphas.

The first professional league was the National Basketball League (NBL), formed in 1898. Its game differed from the college game in that a chicken-wire cage typically surrounded the court, separating players from often hostile fans. (Basketball players were long referred to as cagers.) The chicken wire was soon replaced with a rope netting, off which the players bounced like prizefighters in a boxing ring. The cage also kept the ball from going out-of-bounds, thus quickening the pace of play. In these early days players were also permitted to resume dribbling after halting. Despite the lively action of the game, the NBL and other early leagues were short-lived, mostly because of the frequent movement of players, who sold their services on a per-game basis. With players performing for several cities or clubs within the same season, the leagues suffered games of unreliable quality and many financially unstable franchises.

The Great Depression of the 1930s hurt professional basketball, and a new NBL was organized in 1937 in and around the upper Midwest. Professional basketball assumed major league status with the organization of the new Basketball Association of America (BAA) in 1946 under the guidance of Walter A. Brown, president of the Boston Garden. Brown contended that professional basketball would succeed only if there were sufficient financial support to nurse the league over the early lean years, if the game emphasized skill instead of brawling, and if all players were restricted to contracts with a reserve rule protecting each team from raiding by another club. Following a costly two-year feud, the BAA and the NBL merged in 1949 to form the National Basketball Association (NBA).

To help equalize the strength of the teams, the NBA established an annual college draft permitting each club to select a college senior in inverse order to the final standings in the previous year’s competition, thus enabling the lower-standing clubs to select the more talented collegians. In addition, the game was altered through three radical rule changes in the 1954–55 season:

A team must shoot for a basket within 24 seconds after acquiring possession of the ball.

A bonus free throw is awarded to a player anytime the opposing team commits more than six (later five, now four) personal fouls in a quarter or more than two personal fouls in an overtime period.

Two free throws are granted for any backcourt foul.

After a struggle to survive, including some large financial losses and several short-lived franchises, the NBA took its place as the major professional basketball league in the United States. A rival 11-team American Basketball Association (ABA), with George Mikan as commissioner, was launched in the 1967–68 season, and a bitter feud developed with the NBA for the top collegiate talent each season. In 1976 the ABA disbanded, and four of its teams were taken into the NBA.

Although basketball is traditionally a winter game, the NBA still fills its arenas and attracts a national television audience in late spring and early summer. As the popularity of the league grew, player salaries rose to an annual average of more than $5 million by mid-2000s, and some superstars earned more than $20 million yearly. The NBA has a salary cap that limits (at least theoretically, as loopholes allow many teams to exceed the cap) the total amount a team can spend on salaries in any given season.

In 2001 the NBA launched the National Basketball Development League (NBDL). The league served as a kind of “farm system” for the NBA. Through its first 50 years the NBA did not have an official system of player development or a true minor league system for bringing up young and inexperienced players such as exists in major league baseball. College basketball has been the area from which the NBA did the vast majority of its recruiting. By 2000 this had begun to change somewhat, as players began to be drafted straight out of high school with increasing frequency. In 2005 the NBA instituted a rule stipulating that domestic players must be at least age 19 and have been out of high school for one year to be eligible for the draft, which in effect required players to spend at least one year in college or on an international professional team before coming to the NBA.

U.S. women’s basketball

Clara Baer, who introduced basketball at the H. Sophie Newcomb College for Women in New Orleans, influenced the women’s style of play with her set of women’s rules, published in 1895. On receiving a diagram of the court from Naismith, Baer mistook dotted lines, indicating the areas in which players might best execute team play, to be restraining lines, with the result that the forwards, centres, and guards were confined to specified areas. This seemed appropriate because many felt that the men’s game was too strenuous for women.

Women’s rules over the years frequently have been modified. Until 1971 there were six players on a team, and the court was so divided that the three forwards played in the frontcourt and did all the scoring while the three guards covered the backcourt. Senda Berenson staged the first women’s college basketball game in 1893 when her freshman and sophomore Smith College women played against one another. In April 1895 the women of the University of California (Berkeley) played Stanford University. Despite a multitude of hindrances (such as being thought unladylike), women’s basketball gradually secured a foothold. In 1971, when women’s rules were changed to reduce the number on a team from six players to five and women were freed from the limits imposed by the half-court game, the level of individual skills and competition quickly rose.

In the early 1980s control of the women’s college game was shifted from the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) to the NCAA, a move that not only streamlined the operation and made it more efficient but also added to the visibility of women’s basketball. The women’s NCAA championship tournament runs concurrently with the men’s, and many of the games are nationally televised. Women’s basketball became an Olympic sport in 1976.

Individual women stars have been heavily recruited by colleges, but the players frequently found that there was no opportunity for them to play beyond the college level. Leagues were occasionally formed, such as the Women’s Professional Basketball League (WPBL); begun in 1978, the WPBL lasted only three years. Eventually filling the void was the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). Aligned with the powerful NBA, the WNBA held its inaugural season in 1997 with eight teams. By 2006 the WNBA had grown to 14 teams, though following the season the Charlotte Sting disbanded, and in 2008 the WNBA’s inaugural champion, the Houston Comets, also folded. The Sacramento Monarchs disbanded in 2009. The Eastern Conference consists of the Atlanta Dream, Chicago Sky, Connecticut Sun (in Uncasville), Indiana Fever (in Indianapolis), New York Liberty (in New York City), and Washington (D.C.) Mystics. The Western Conference comprises the Los Angeles Sparks, Minnesota Lynx (in Minneapolis), Phoenix Mercury, San Antonio Silver Stars, Seattle Storm, and Tulsa (Oklahoma) Shock. Women’s professional basketball is played during the summer months.

International competition

The success of international basketball was greatly advanced by Forrest C. (“Phog”) Allen, a Naismith disciple and a former coach at the University of Kansas, who led the movement for the inclusion of basketball in the Olympic Games in 1936 and thereafter. Basketball has also been played in the Pan-American Games since their inauguration in 1951. The international game is governed by the Fédération Internationale de Basketball Amateur (FIBA). World championships began in 1950 for men and in 1953 for women. (The men’s tournament was renamed the FIBA Basketball World Cup in 2014.) Under international rules the court differs in that there is no frontcourt or backcourt, and the free throw lanes form a modified wedge shape. There are some differences in rules, including those governing substitutions, technical and personal fouls, free throws, intermissions, and time-outs. Outside the United States there are few places that strictly separate amateur from professional athletes.

Anne Donovan (centre) of the United States attempts to shoot over Polona Dornik (left) and Sladjana …

Focus on Sports

Basketball has caught on particularly well in Italy. The Italian professional basketball league (Lega Basket) is highly regarded and popular in that country. Spain also has several basketball leagues, the main one being the ACB (Asociación de Clubes de Baloncesto). The other major centre of European basketball is eastern Europe, particularly the Balkans. Although the European leagues are not formally aligned with the American NBA, there are links between European and American basketball. It is not uncommon for European players to be drafted by the NBA, nor is it uncommon for American players to play in Europe. American players in the European leagues tend to be older players who have finished successful NBA careers in the United States or younger players who have not yet been drafted into the NBA.

Michael Batiste of Panathinaikos shooting over an opponent during a Euroleague basketball game in …

Britannica Web sites

Basketball is a fast-paced and exciting sport. It is very popular in the United States, where it began in the 1890s. It has also become popular in many other countries. In a basketball game two teams of five players compete. The goal is to score more points than the other team. They score by tossing, or shooting, a ball through a raised goal called a basket.

It could have been called boxball. In the winter of 1891, James Naismith, an instructor at a YMCA training school in Springfield, Massachusetts, asked the janitor to hang a couple of boxes from the gymnasium balcony for an experimental indoor ball game. The game became known as basketball because the janitor, unable to find boxes to make the elevated goals, nailed up two half-bushel peach baskets. Naismith came up with the game in hopes of curing the winter doldrums of his students who had grown bored with the routine of gymnastics and calisthenics. Naismith first experimented with indoor versions of rugby, lacrosse, and other sports, but they proved too violent. The former divinity student eventually struck upon the idea of upright goals that would minimize the force on the ball and keep some distance between the players and the actual scoring. Thus the internationally popular game of basketball was born.

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